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Author: Kenney, James

Biography:

KENNEY, James (1780-1849: ODNB)

Born in Co. Limerick, Ireland, he was the son of James Kenney, who moved to London about 1800 to take up the management of Boodle's Club (the former Savoir Faire coffee house) in St. James's. The name of his mother is not known. Though apprenticed in a London bank, Kenney had literary ambitions. In 1803 he published both his first collection of poems and a farce, Raising the Wind, which was an instant success at Covent Garden. Kenney left the bank and embarked on a career as one of the most prolific and popular writers for the stage of his day. He wrote comic operas, farces, tragedies, and melodramas; his tragedy The Pledge had a command performance before the young Queen Victoria. In 1812 he married the widow of Thomas Holcroft (q.v.), Louisa Sebastian (Mercier) Holcroft, thereby acquiring a family of four children to whom they added another four. For a few years they lived in France, perhaps to economize; the fact that Drury Lane staged a benefit for him on the day of his death suggests that they were still hard up then. Kenney had been awarded the substantial sum of £80 by the RLF in 1846; a joint application by his daughters Virginia and Teresa in 1853 followed, bringing them £40. He died at home in Brompton, London, of heart disease and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. (ODNB 6 May 2021; DIB; ancestry.com 6 May 2021)

 

Books written (3):

London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1803
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820